Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  He looked pleadingly at Donna. “Do you hear the voice? The other voice, down there? Do you hear it? I tried to go down there again, but I couldn’t find the ladderwa—”

  “Cha-cha,” she said, taking a step forward. Then she bolted toward him.

  “Cha-cha, defend yourself,” Reade ordered.

  Cha-cha drew her revolver from the waistband of his jeans. He hunched over like an old man and aimed it at the floor.

  “It’s loaded,” he said miserably. “Office D., I put the bullets in it.”

  “Careful then, Chach,” she said, halting. “There’s no safety.”

  “No?” he asked querulously. “No? But he said, but he said … do you hear the voice?”

  Reade snapped his fingers. “I repeat: You know they’re from the Morris, and you know I took her down. Admit it! Admit it and I won’t hurt you.”

  “You won’t hurt me anyway, you crazy son of a bitch.” She lunged at Cha-cha and wrested the gun from his limp grasp, ran backward, and took aim. With a cry, Cha-cha pushed her out of his way and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The floating bottles swung back and forth, like so much sea junk on the waves.

  “Stop!” the captain shouted. “I order you, Cha-cha! This is your king!”

  “I’m coming!” Cha-cha cried in the distance.

  “Let him go. He’s hallucinating,” Reade said, as if to himself. “There is nothing calling him. There is … I …”

  Reade shook himself. He moved his shoulders in a strange, agitated way. Then the moment seemed to pass. He gazed at Donna and saluted her with the flashlight angled smartly against his tricorne.

  “Please, Miss Almond. Say it with me. ‘Captain Reade, I know you sank the Morris.’ ”

  She gazed at him. He scowled at her and lowered his arm, said, “That’s why these pages are in the trophy room. All these things.” He gestured left, right. “They’re my … scalps.” With a smack of the flashlight, he said, “Quickly, now. No more foreplay. I have invited you to come aboard. I’m waiting for the pleasure of your reply.”

  Silently she cleared her throat. She would not freak out; she would not. “I am aboard.”

  As the flashlight moved across his face, she saw him smile. Then he burst into gales of laughter.

  “You are so foolish, you’re such a sodding bitch, you fool, you loose whore of a fool; you have no idea, none, you don’t know. You haven’t figured it out, have you? That things are not what they seem here? Things on my ship are the way I want them, and no other way? Haven’t you seen, haven’t you heard? Are you so thick, then, that you can’t be fully reached? Are you so damnably thick? Why haven’t you been sucked farther down?”

  He pawed the air, waving the flashlight. Spittle flew from his mouth. His eye flashed like a green beacon in the light. “It doesn’t make sense! You’ve seen this much. Why don’t you see everything?”

  She wanted to take a step backward, didn’t dare show weakness. She had no liking for killing; there must be a way to stop this, here and now, and no lives lost. But God! How had he done all this? And how had he gotten so fucking crazy? Or rather, how had he acted so normal?

  “What are you talking about, Captain Reade?”

  “No,” he said decisively. “No, I won’t hand everything to you on a plate.” To her astonishment, he spun slowly in a circle, his hands out at his sides, his head tipped toward the ceiling.

  “Charades, my dearest slut bitch Donna Almond. I spend eternity playing charades. What am I now? Am I a spinning boy, or a spinning bottle? The wheel of fortune? Or your lover? The call of loss, the call of love? Which call for you?” He jerked to a stop and shined the light into her eyes. She looked away; the room flashed like a piece of film negative. She almost dropped the gun.

  Then the ceiling dropped to within a breath of her height. The stench of human shit and piss and sweat rammed down her nose. The floor squirmed and wiggled. Black fingers pawed her foot.

  “God!” she screamed.

  “Yes. Now it begins with you. I think it is the boy, after all. My beckoning to you, the thing that finally makes you listen. Makes you see. You can save him here, Donna. You can save him.”

  “What?” She plowed through the mine field of hands, pulling at her ankles, her calves, down …

  “How do you know we aren’t still there, at the place we first met, oh, my lady of the lake? How do you know I haven’t caught you, and now we’re beneath the surface, you and I, me beauty, and the shadow of this ship passes above us. And you think, Thank God, thank God, you’re saved. But you don’t know how wrong you are. You don’t know!”

  The hands wound around her and pulled, and Donna’s finger jerked the trigger. The report was strong; there was no evident effect. The hands still reached, clung. Their nails dug into her ankles, tore.

  “I am the Flying Dutchman,” Reade said in a sharp, vicious voice. “I am he, and I want you to be my Life-in-Death. Instead of Cha-cha, I choose you. I’ll let you see things you can’t imagine. I’ll let you live, Donna dear. And I’ll bring them back for you. I’ll bring you the boy. And the man.” He smiled slyly.

  The hands grew arms, attached to men, shackled to the floor. Black faces, contorted in fear. Arching backs. Naked, filthy bodies. With a shout, she forced one leg free, only to be caught by another.

  The captain waved his arms. The hands in the floor, the men, disappeared in a flash. With a grunt, Donna staggered to the left, caught her balance, and ran for the door, knocking bottles left, right. Pushing them away; an armada of them in her way, swinging, pummeling her. She covered her head and hit the wall.

  Fumbled for the door. It was shut. Locked. Fuck! She raised her gun and smashed the glass door with it, with her hand. The shards sliced her open, pierced her cat-scratch scabs. She inhaled sharply as she fumbled for the knob. Her ankles streamed blood on the solid floor.

  Then he was behind her. She whirled around and smacked against the door frame.

  “Ah, you begin to see, now that I’ve accepted you. In your stateroom, luv. I did it to you. I read you. At last. That’s why I made the mittens for you.”

  “What?”

  “Go ahead. Shoot me.” With a hoot, he thrust forward his leg, stepped up to it like a boy playing Simon Says, taking a giant step. Another. He stood perhaps three feet from her.

  “Shoot me.”

  Men on the floor, men; gone now, but she’d seen them, seen—

  Hallucinations. John and she talked about them. The toxic waste. Or something else.

  Steady, Donny. Steady. Don’t think. Act.

  She cocked her gun. “It’s ready to go,” she warned him.

  “And so am I.” Another giant step—he came at it, flying at her, his tricorne flying backward, and she squeezed the trigger and the bullet

  shot out and lodged inside his chest and he grunted

  and then

  he stood there, unhurt, and giggled.

  She gaped at him. Her eyes darted toward the gun. He’d messed with it. While she was out, and had foolishly left it tucked in her drawer, he’d disabled it, given her blanks.

  He advanced on her, one step at a time. “Seven-league boots,” he said. “I have seven-league boots. I stand astride the oceans like a Colossus.”

  She reached forward, grabbed one of the bottles, and hurtled it at him. He dodged it and it smashed to the floor, shattering.

  The wind-sound roared around her, a gale of shrieking blasts permeated with a stench that made her double over. The stink of rotten meat was on her hands, in her mouth. Rotten and pulpy and purple, long-drowned, long

  down

  down

  down, way down deep in the murk, where no amount of dredging could locate the bus, and the kids bobbed around like marionettes, their mouths gaping and fish-eaten, nibbled through their sockets into their brains, where the icy Tahoe water washed away all their memories, their hopes, their nightmares. A Zen peace, a null heaven.

  Way

  down,
<
br />   down,

  down,

  a little boy with reindeer mittens struggled in the water, making no sound; and the shape of a ship made him hold his breath just one more second, and one more, because they would help him, and the bottle, the green bottle drifted down,

  waiting.

  “Come on. Jump overboard, Donna,” he taunted her. “Jump in. The others are.” He put his hand to his ear. “Even now, the doctor is framing his RSVP. It is only polite, you know. Only for the sake of form that I’ve even issued invitations.”

  He took another step toward her. She shot again. Again. Turned to one of the glass cases—the mermaid—and shot at it, to see what was wrong with her bullets, because blanks just didn’t make sense; where did you get blanks in the middle of the goddamn ocean?

  The mermaid skull threw back its head and screamed.

  And suddenly the captain screamed, too. He made fists in the air, punched; screamed and screamed, “No! NO! Stop!”

  Impossibly, he pushed her out of the way, crashed through the door, and fled down the companionway.

  Donna prepared to pursue.

  And then someone fell out of the shadows behind the door, someone covered with filth and sores, someone screaming, “My God, Reade’s dead! That’s what he meant! He’s always been dead!”

  Donna raised her gun, even though .38 Specials took just five bullets, and said, “Don’t move.”

  28

  Shattered

  As the captain ran through the ship—through all his ships, war vessels, freighters, submarines, pleasure craft—all of them pleasure craft—his mind looped round and around, like a piece of flotsam on the water, a crate disgorged by the ocean after a particularly wonderful sinking:

  Something bad, something wrong … an old stanza forgotten. Something forgotten, and I am in danger!

  And unaware of the dangers that were charging toward him and lurking close—oh, so close—by, Cha-cha kissed the dirty metal of the hatch and closed his eyes. He was home, sweet home.

  All his goodbuddies from the Morris were there, his own little crew; oh, yes, ’scuse me for crapping out on you, King Neptune, but you are too much for me, big kahuna, and this voice is so much louder than yours. It just led me here, called me and I heard it so good, and this time I knew exactly where I was at.

  “Yes,” Cha-cha said. “Oh, yes,”

  He remembered the gash in the bottom of the door, and he would probably have bent down and called, “Yoo hoo?” to the voice, and seen somebody in there who would answer back, “Chach! Dude!” and unlock the door. Except that now there was a big drum like the ones on the Morris in front of the door, like someone was closing it off. Keeping things tidy, like his galley back on the ship.

  No prob, he would just move it. He put his hands around the rim and heaved. But the drum wouldn’t budge; either it was too heavy or bolted to the floor or something. He squatted and tried again. No luck.

  “Bum-nation,” he said, wiping his forehead.

  COME, said the voice, and his ghostbuddies from Nam whispered, “Hurry, Cha-cha, get her out of there.”

  So he found him an ax, so easy to do. And when that sucker came down on the top of the drum, it shook his entire body. His bones rubbed together and it hurt, man, but he hefted the ax again and brought it down again. And again.

  Then one of his goodbuddies suggested he skip the drum and go for the latch. You broke that open, you maybe could push the hatch inside and wedge past the barrel. Copacetic!

  So he switched his attention to the handle. Wham! The ax made a scritching sound as the rusty latch started to flake apart like oxidized cheese. Yeah, yeah, cool!

  He axed it again. Break, baby, break.

  COME COME COME COME COME COME COME

  “ASAP, baby,” Cha-cha said happily, and his breath condensed like London fog; and he was so excited he ignored the goose bumps on his arms and the fact that his grubby sneakers were freezing to the deck.

  Scritch.

  Scritch.

  Chatter-scrabble.

  COME COME COME COME COMECOMECOME COMECOMECOMECOMECOMECOME

  and it sounded like Oooommmm, like with the Maharishi; and all the Morris ghosts—the little black-and-yellow bumblebee kids, and the carved-up girls, and the dudes without their ears and gonads—the Khmer dudes, or whatever, the dads and moms—they had swum aboard and were all grouped around him

  on the Group W bench, as Arlo Guthrie would say—

  No, no, they grouped around him and the door, and they pushed on the bulkhead in a great bumblebee throng, buzz! trying to tear down that wall, baby.

  “Hurry, Cha-cha, hurry!”

  As Cha-cha raised the ax, they helped him lift it, Iwo Jima style, hands on hands on hands. Cha-cha’s eyes filled with tears. Finally, he could do something to help them.

  What that was, he had no idea, but he knew that was the case.

  Scritch.

  Chatter-scrabble.

  Scritch.

  Cooooooommmmmmmmmmmmme.

  Meditatin’ on freedom, yessir!

  “Yay, Cha-cha!” They were cheering him on, their hero! Their war hero! And Cha-cha had a memory of a hammock, and a mom of his own, and a lullaby, and all these things were psychedelically, synaptically connected to this room, and the voice inside it, you betcha.

  A charred little boy put his arms around Cha-cha’s legs and hugged him hard, speaking in Vietnamese as Cha-cha smacked and whacked that danged old latch. The metal door was gashed and scratched.

  Scritch.

  Chatter-scrabble.

  Chatter-scrabble. And a low gong noise, as something on the other side of the hatch hit the drum, real hard.

  “Almost there!” Cha-cha announced to his goodbuddies.

  For a flash he remembered about Officer Donna, leaving her up there with the big dude, whoops.

  And the sound of rushing water came up behind him like a shark.

  * * *

  “C’mon, goddamnit, calm down,” Donna growled at the blithering sack of bones and stink, and reflected that if she lowered her weapon it might just do that.

  “He’s dead, don’t you see, dead.” The figure staggered forward. Dear God, it was a young man, very young. Handsome, once, by the shape of the features beneath the dried blood and the feces.

  “What’d they do to you?” Donna asked in a soft voice. “What’s happened to you?”

  Staggering, he held one hand up as if to ask her forbearance; then he said, “The captain is some kind of sorcerer.” He laughed hollowly. “I know how that sounds. He makes you … he makes you see things. This ship …” He waved his hand. “It’s not here. The people. They’re dead.”

  “And you, are you dead?” Great. She was standing here with a nutcase while Cha-cha was running around loose, and the captain

  —she had shot him, hadn’t she? The bullets had not missed—

  —was probably offing the passengers, and—

  Nearer, my God, to Thee.

  “How’d you do that?” she demanded sharply. With a quick motion, she pushed her hair from her eyes. Christ, she was sweating like a pig.

  “You heard it, didn’t you?” the man asked. His eyes shone through the crusty overlayer like beacons. “You heard the singing!”

  Fresh fear prickled her scalp. The walls went up around not only her heart but every other organ, including her dinosaur brain and the one Glenn called her coptosaurus cere-bullshit.

  “You saw the slaves. This section was a slave ship.” He began to whoop with fear, sucked on the knuckle of his left hand to stop himself. At the sight, Donna almost barfed right then and there.

  “Over there was a ferry. This isn’t a museum. It’s his trophy room. All those ships …” He threw back his head and wailed. “My ship!”

  Donna swallowed. Her gun wavered and she steadied it, making a tripod of herself, legs apart, arms forward, the way they did on cop shows. He didn’t know how many bullets a .38 Special took.

  “C’mon, c’m
on, pull yourself together. Talk to me,” Donna urged. “C’mon, man. What’s your name?”

  “He made them sink! He made them see things. Your friends—” He fell backward against the wall and slid to the floor, grabbing his head and keening like an animal.

  When he didn’t resume speaking, she said, “What about my friends?”

  “We’ve got to get away.” He looked at her with mad eyes. “They’re mutinying. They’re going to take the ship away and then who knows what will happen? Maybe he’s the only thing that’s keeping it together! It flickers! I’ve seen it flicker.”

  “What? Who’s mutinying?”

  “You saw it flicker!” He reached his hands up pleadingly. “You did!”

  Men in the floor, the stench, the stench …

  She shook her head. Just the facts, ma’am. The facts, not the hallucinations—

  —the moving bottles, the music, the men in the floor, the bullets that hadn’t killed him.

  “What’s been happening to the passengers?”

  “He makes them come aboard.” He wove back and forth, back and forth like a snake. For an instant she thought he was going to spring at her. Instead, he hung his head and mumbled something.

  “What?” she practically shouted at him.

  “They told me to find you! They said you’d save us! Because you’re the one!”

  She’s the one. Ice water in her brains; ice, and fear, and a knowing—

  “What one?”

  “The one he can’t penetrate,” said a voice behind her. Then a footfall behind her. A thunder of them. Right behind her. Inches behind her. She jerked her head over her shoulder and saw nothing.

  Ice-water fear; her heart slogging in that awful, slow-motion helplessness where you see not your life, but the end of it. Donna had faced her own death twice, that of others, many times. You shook it, shook that terror and moved on. You took a breath, hitched up your pants—

  She couldn’t blink. She couldn’t breathe. There was nothing behind her.

  Nothing.

  “Tell her!” the man shrieked.

  Then a shadow cast a net high and wide over her. The chill thudded through her heart, spread like a glacier to her groin, her lips, her forehead. Cold, very cold; she shivered hard. Gooseflesh rose on her arms; the hairs stood on end. This was more than the creeps. This was knowing something was coming, or happening, or beginning.